It was a scene of real violence, like a fist fight or a car crash. Feathers floated in the air where the pigeon had collided with the railroad bridge and the bird flopped on the road like a ruined volleyball. Then it skidded around, flapping one wing and weaving back and forth across traffic. Very looked like she was going to cry, so I took off my jacket.
My short story “The Audubon Society” appears in the new issue of Jerry magazine.
GUILLERMO PIZARRO (1885-1951). Few figures in the history of modern meteorology have been as influential as Guillermo Pizarro. Informed by a keen analytical wit, Pizarro’s rejection of Enlightenment notions of temperature in favor of more subjectivizing measures—summarized in his concept of tempidité, a precursor of today’s “heat index”—represents the cornerstone upon which meteorology still rests.
Born in Barcelona to Cuban parents, Pizarro attended the National Meteorological Academy in Madrid, where he studied briefly with Pablo de Nuñez, an academic forecaster of the 19th century realist tradition, who came to represent everything he rejected about climatology. Later, at the Institut Météorologique in Paris, Pizarro was exposed to the work of Teurais and Frambeau of the so-called Kinesthetic school, a group of avant-garde weathermen then experimenting with the effects of relative humidity on perspiration and bodily perception. In 1910, he also took part in the demonstrations of the August Secession, a group led by Teurais that aimed to reproduce the physical sensations of a Parisian summer by immersing themselves in fluids of various temperatures and consistencies.
Cal Morgan, editorial director at Harper Perennial, is bringing his Fifty-Two Stories project up to date by releasing forty short stories at once — all in one free e-book. There are a lot of great contributors here, and I’m excited to be included.
Atlantic City Medical Center - Frank Sinatra Wing
(On Saturday, I participated in an evening of Say Anything fan fiction as part of Lit Crawl NYC. Here is my contribution, an attempt at double fan fiction. It is best read as I read it Saturday – with the Game of Thrones theme playing in the background.)
“I am Eddark Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Hand of the King,” Lloyd Dobler said loudly, his voice carrying across the entire restaurant, “and I come before you to confess my treason in the sight of gods and men.”
A dinner roll came sailing out of the crowd. More rolls – and the occasional balled up napkin – followed. A hundred voices were screaming. King Joffrey stepped out from behind the shields of his Kingsguard.
“My mother bids me let Lord Eddard take the black, and Lady Sansa has begged mercy for her father. But they have the soft hearts of women. So long as I am your king, treason shall never go unpunished. Ser Ilyn, bring me his head!”
Ser Ilyn Payne gestured and the knight in black-and-gold gave a command. The gold cloaks flung Lloyd Dobler to the marble, with his head and chest out over the edge. Ser Ilyn drew a two-handed greatsword from the scabbard on his back. As he lifted the blade above his head, the harsh fluorescent lighting seemed to ripple and dance down the dark metal, glinting off an edge sharper than any razor.
***
So concluded Lloyd’s appearance as Ned Stark, at Winterfellow’s, Gatlinburg’s only Game of Thrones theme restaurant and medieval dinner theater. The lights went out and Lloyd felt around for the styrofoam replica of his head, which was removed from his shoulders twice nightly before modest – but enthusiastic – crowds of landlocked tourists. Finding it, he tucked it under his arm like a basketball and exited the arena.
He rarely bothered to remove his makeup or to unbundle his hair before leaving for the night. It was drawn back somewhat effeminately, like Katherine Ross’s in The Graduate. He did not even change clothes. He drove home – and stopped off to buy beer – looking like the bass player from Krokus.
***
The recent removal of Corey and her things from Lloyd’s rented brick bungalow had caused the house to list forward, or so it seemed. The floors sloped perceptibly toward the small front yard, and maybe always had, although the effect was undeniable now with no throw rugs or rock posters or guitars to distract from what was really a very steep grade. A pencil, or even a quarter, dropped at the right angle between the couch and the coffee table might roll, unimpeded, to the front of the house, and disappear forever in the warped gaps between the floor and the baseboards, which flared as wide as two inches in places – something Lloyd had never noticed until Corey was all the way gone.
He put the beer in the refrigerator, took two bottles for himself, and sunk into the living room couch. He turned on his laptop.
He had resisted Facebook for as long as he could. Everything about it screamed bought, sold, and processed. But it helped him keep up with Connie and Jason, who had become quite a mixed martial artist, although he was a better grappler than a striker.
And it was how he had reconnected with Corey, a voice from the past. She had moved down from Chicago and it seemed so right. What he should have done all along. But even that didn’t work out. She was still too angry. Still at Joe. Still at everyone, really.
Lloyd logged in. A little red square appeared by the icon of two people – a man and a woman – very close together. The Facebook symbol for friends – and possibly more.
He clicked and the menu dropped down.
“Diane Court,” it said. “15 mutual friends.”
His heart raced. He looked at the tiny picture but could not bring himself to click it. He tossed his laptop aside and stood up. He paced and finished his beer. He sat back down on the couch and stared at the screen, considering his options.
The choice couldn’t have been simpler, or more difficult. His mouse hovered across them both.
“Confirm” or “Not Now.”
But all of this is a joke, right? A Portlandia-style dig at the vogue for artisanal everything, from oat beers to mustache waxes? Well, maybe – but perhaps not only.
I wrote about artisanal pencil sharpener David Rees for the summer issue of Green Door.
But whether you read “Rip Van Winkle” as a statement on politics, marital relations, or as a tale that binds history to nature – Van Winkle’s bowling partners are determined to be Hendrick Hudson’s crew, and summer thunder in the Catskills is taken to be the sound of their pins crashing – the fact remains: Rip Van Winkle does nothing and gets away with it.
I wrote a little thing about Rip Van Winkle for the Hudson Valley magazine Green Door.
I’ll be reading at a night of Say Anything fan fiction a week from Saturday at BookCourt. It’s a Brooklyn Writers Space event that’s part of Brooklyn’s Lit Crawl. I talk all about it at The Huffington Post.
Feels good to be back on the masthead at a newsweekly after all these years.
Do all your work as though you had a thousand years to live; and as you would if you knew you must die to-morrow.
Mother Ann, founder of the Shakers. Heard this in an old Ken Burns doc last night and liked the paradox of it.
”I detest my own past and that of others. I detest resignation, patience, professional heroism and all those nice, obligatory sentiments. I also detest the decorative arts, folklore, publicity, the voice of speakers, aerodynamics, boy scouts, the smell of gasoline, topical matters and drunkards. I love subversive humour, freckles, knees, the long hair of women, the laugh of young children at liberty, a young girl running in the street. I wish for real love, the impossible and the utopian. I fear knowledge of my exact limits.”
René Magritte
Badlands (1973)
dir. Terrence Malick
8/10
What a poster.
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